Echo, Texas, Coleman County. (original) (raw)

History on a Pinhead

First settlement occured in the late 1870s. When the Miles and Gholson ranch sold out in 1881. One William Dibrell bought the site and renamed it Echo. A post office was granted in 1910 and by 1940 there were 75 people living in the vicinity.

The school and post office have been closed for years and the population was a mere 16 people from 1970 to 1990.

The closed church nine years earlier
Photo courtesy Barclay Gibson, March 2008

The house next to the church. A parsonage?
Photo courtesy Dustin Martin, August 2017

A small brick building in Echo
Photo courtesy Dustin Martin, August 2017

Memories of Echo

by Brenda Cason BrownI grew up in Echo, Texas. First on the Dibrell Ranch and later on the Morse-Miller holdings.

The church was located across the highway and next to it was a brick, one room schoolhouse. Dee Smith's son, James D. and I were playmates. The Smiths had the general store and gas station and somewhere I have pictures of it as well. I lived across a cattle guard on the Dibrell Ranch. The house was across the barbed wire fence from the schoolhouse. James D. and I sat under the window of the school house and learned our lessons; so well that he skipped a grade. I, unfortunately, was unable to skip a grade but I could do my multiplication tables in the first grade and write cursive as well. I was later married in the Echo Church. The church was Methodist one Sunday and Baptist the next. The preachers alternated their sermons and the Sunday School alternated the literature and lessons, however the congregation was always the same.

We often had dinner on the banks of the Jim Ned underneath the pecan trees on the Edmundson Ranch. Girls and women swam on the north side of the creek and boys and men to the south. Never together. Mr. Edmunson drove the school bus when I attended Coleman High School.

My great-great grandfather, John Jesse Cason of Rocky Creek was scalped by Comanches near Lake Brownwood (1856). Captain Elkins of the Texas Rangers tracked them to Haskell, Texas and killed them all. There is an account of the scalping in the Brownwood paper of which I have a copy. He is buried in an unmarked grave on the Cason Ranch in Brown County.

I later lived on the Morse-Miller Ranch all the way through high school.

Louie T. Miller was my mentor, bringing beloved library books for me to read from the Coleman library his Mother, Mrs. J.A.B. Miller ran. Later his sister, Doris Miller was my Freshman Literature teacher at Coleman High School.

Iattended Burkett Grammar School and am well acquainted with that community. I also have pictures of the Burkett bridge crossing Pecan Bayou with the beautiful pecan orchard below it. My parents are buried at the Burkett Cemetery. The school has been torn down except for the Gym which is used for a community center.

My Mother was born at Webbville. Maggie Bernice Sanders to Benjamin Franklin Sanders and Mattie Ward Sanders.

Cason, Texas was settled by relatives of my Great-great grandfather and now consists of just a Post Office and a service station.
- Berenda Cason Brown, Shreveport, Louisiana

Echo, Texas Forum

" Can anyone on the Echo forum tell me what the old smoke stack was used for?" - Mack, May 23, 2017

1920s Texas map showing Echo in NE Coleman County
From Texas state map #10749
Courtesy Texas General Land Office

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